


Lazarus Rises

by SilverDrake



Category: Sherlock (TV), Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Johnlock - Freeform, Reichenbach Falls, crossover theory, superlock, supernatural mid-season 9
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 07:06:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1460347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverDrake/pseuds/SilverDrake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The reason the Fall will never be openly explained.</p><p>(alternative crossover ending for the Reichenbach Falls episode)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lazarus Rises

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tanachvil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanachvil/gifts).



«Goodbye, John,» Sherlock said.  
He threw away the phone and stepped forward, ready to jump, as the whole world seemed to freeze around him.  
He was shaking. It felt somehow new to him, at least when a plan was involved.  
Still, this was no common plan. For all intents and purposes, Moriarty had won, and this was burning in Sherlock's mind with an intensity nearly as strong as the anticipation of pain to come.  
"You may not be a fake, but you are cheating,» said a voice in his mind.  
"Shut up," he nearly turned to see if his nemesis had suddenly risen from suicide, so vivid was his voice.  
Was that what it had to come to? Jumping for them because he could not find another way?  
"I have the tools, but you are supposed to be the genius," said another voice.  
Too bad Sherlock could spot such a simple lie a mile away, especially when it came from his own brother.  
He wanted to be a genius, he wanted to feel that, granted. Cracking every pattern and hidden structure in the apparent chaos of the world to reshape them in a sequence of events that would lead to the desired outcome. Control. Order. From the world of Moriarty to the world of Mycroft. Two extremes and him, Sherlock, caught between them from day one, even when one of them he did not know or did not exist anymore.  
"You could be either of them. Most of the time you look like you really try."  
«John...» he begin to protest, then realized he did not have the phone anymore and Watson was still where he told him to stay.  
He could not see Watson's face clearly because of the distance, but the sound of his voice on the phone was clear enough. Frightened, confused, not disillusioned a bit.  
Whatever was going to happen, he would never believe the lie. No, his good Watson was above that. He was seeing something else than everybody else. The everybody else who would fall for it. Because it was so easier to believe it. Because they wanted to, after all. That was the plan all along, wasn't it? Too bad it was Jim Moriarty's plan, and not his.  
"Why are you doing this, Sherlock?" asked John.  
Why, indeed.  
There were trained operatives in place, after all. It was only a gamble. Moriarty's group would be caught anyway, after all. All for three lives. Not many, in a broader view. An old landlady, a half-decent but honest and driven detective inspector, a former war doctor with not much going on in his life.  
"What would you trade on a battlefield, John?" he wondered, but he already knew the answer.  
So why was he choosing this?  
"You don't like chances because you don't really believe in chance," Moriarty returned as the rest of the world faded in the background and the only thing he could focus on was the street below.  
«And I'm not taking one, not on my friends,» Sherlock said.  
He opened his arms and jumped.  
Time started flowing again, and the pavement drew near so fast that it seemed to suck him in.  
"It's okay, Sherlock," he lied to himself.  
A split second. He had a split second to do two things: brace and pray.  
He did not have the time to ork around his surprise for the latter, as he smashed into the pavement and the shock of the impact ran through his bones straight to his brain as a massive, blinding pain wave.  
Then he died.

Electrocution.  
The jolt was so intense and sudden that he wanted to scream like he never had in his life.  
But he couldn't. He was dead, wasn't he?  
And yet there was this primal, overpowering storm wrecking through what was left of his conscience. And everything else was a pale haze.  
There were people around him, he could feel them vaguely through the broken signals of what was left of his body. He could not focus on them, he could barely acknowledge the existence of a world around him for that matter, except for one of them. But it was not his brain telling him that, it was something else.  
To a damaged part of his dying optic nerve it was a light brown stain against the glare of the sky and other, darker figures. To him, to his consciousness, it looked like a sort of energy wave in constant flow, emitting a screeching noise that would have blown off his ears if he still had them. But he was almost sure his real body would never have heard that.  
It was the energy being that had just touched him, there could be no doubt. And among the noise and the pain and the light he could feel with all of his senses one concept, one word:  
«Stay.»  
Then it was gone. In a distorted, echoing flutter of wings, he wasn't there anymore. But whatever form Sherlock's consciousness had taken, it was still compelled to obey. It stayed where it was, attached to the broken shell of the body that was shutting down there and then on the pavement, trying to isolate from the remaining, chaotic signals that his dead body was sending in its last few seconds of desperate clinging to life.  
Only one he let in. A voice he knew so well.  
Even though his eyes could no longer make one shadow from another, and the impulses were growing weaker as all the systems shut down, he knew by instinct that John was near him. He hadn't believed him. Or he did not care.  
"My good John," he thought as all signals died down and he was left in a silent darkness without end.

The stairs were broken. He could not go up or down, and there was a grey haze both above and below him in the stairwell. For a second he wondered what would happen if he jumped.  
«You shouldn't. There is only so much that can be done to keep you out of the Veil.»  
Sherlock turned to look at the man beside him. Tall, dark hair and blue eyes, a brown trenchcoat, and alien.  
«I cannot read you,» he confessed.  
«I'm a celestial being,» the angel said, «I suppose that explains it.»  
«I suppose so,» Sherlock said, unsatisfied.  
He sat on the steps. There was nowhere to go, after all.  
«How long will this last?» he asked. «You couldn't just bring me back? I thought you had control over these things.»  
«It's more complicated than that,» the angel shrugged. «I held to my part of the bargain, though, didn't I?»  
«For now,» Sherlock conceded.  
He was having trouble connecting with his memories. Even his identity was a hazy concept, in a way.  
«You are slipping away,» the angel warned in his deep, monotone voice. «Don't do that.»  
«How can I... not do it?» Sherlock asked. «I am dead, my body and my brain are deteriorating with everything in them. I am not even sure what I am right now.»  
«Your soul. Just the soul itself and nothing else. Less even than a ghost, in many ways. That's why you are having problems with your memories.»  
«What do you mean?»  
«It is not the job of angels to bring souls into the afterlife,» the angel explained. «We can stop people from dying or bring them back on the spot, but after that we are no longer supposed to meddle. What happens next is the job of creatures called reapers. Under normal conditions you would be hunted right now by one of them or become a ghost.»  
«Which is not what we agreed upon,» Sherlock observed, coldly.  
«No, it is not.»  
«So what happens now? Do I have to fight off those... reapers? Do I have to hide?»  
«Not quite,» said the angel, as if all of this was the most ordinary thing. «I struck a deal with them, so to speak. But you had to stay here, at the doorstep, and here is where your memories break down as your body begins its decay.»  
«Will you be able to... repair me, after this?»  
«Mostly,» said the angel, and Sherlock raised an eyebrow. «Death is a transforming experience, after all,» was all he added. «What matters now is that you find something to hold on to.»  
«What for?»  
«Your brain is failing, and soon it will be gone entirely. I could raise you now, if you want...»  
«No,» Sherlock interrupted. «My friends will be at risk until Moriarty's organization is destroyed. I cannot turn up too soon. They must see enough to be convinced I'm really dead and any news of the contrary is just a mistake.»  
«So the alternative is to wait. But before you forget everything, you must lock on something or someone to be your focus, something strong enough to carry you and to call you back when the time is right.»  
«Oh, I know who that is,» Sherlock said with a subtle smile.

He could not know if time was passing slower or quicker than in the real world. In all honesty he could not know if time was passing at all. The stairs were unchanging, the haze seemed to grow thicker or lighter at a moment's notice, but nothing really changed in any way.  
Of who he was, or had been, he doubted. After all, all he had to remember was a stairwell and a fog. And knowing that someone would come. What for? He did not remember.  
He tried to focus on the one detail that now and then remembered him there was a living world somewhere. It was a noise. A voice. Most of the time he could not remember who it belonged to, at least until it returned. Then he would wait. Because the voice would always come back. Fainter, maybe, more tired, but it would be back, sooner or later.  
There was that word. "Shell lock". Possibly. What would that mean, though? But it never stopped there. It became clearer. "Sheer lock". Still nonsense. Maybe a name. "Shylock"? Yes, sure, but he did not remembered what it referred to. Then it struck him: Sherlock. It was repeated, like a call. Someone trying to get through. Someone asking for something.  
«Don't. Be. Dead.»  
"John?"  
A flutter of wings.

«Would you do it, just for me? Just... stop it. Stop this.»  
John Watson touched the gravestone and slowly walked away. At a distance, between the trees, Sherlock and the angel watched him.  
«Impressive human, this Watson,» the angel said.  
«Indeed,» Sherlock said, bitterly.  
«He hasn't believed for a second that you lied. He is hurting more than anybody else in the world and yet he would welcome you back with open arms,» the angel paused for a second, lost in a memory. «Your trust in him was almost blind.»  
«I believe in John Watson.»  
«Even more than he does believe in you,» the angel observed.  
Sherlock looked at him in surprise.  
«Human minds are open to an angel, unless they are warded.»  
«It seems I will have to look into that,» Sherlock took note.  
«Yes, you should, especially for what we are going to do.»  
«Remind me.»  
The angel looked away.  
«A few years from now, the angels will be cast out of Heaven. I need help finding a counter spell.»  
«As much as I like to stretch myself, It seems well out of my expertise.»  
«You don't need to understand or cast the spell. It must be hidden somewhere on Earth, and we need to find it so I can fix Heaven.»  
«But how do you know it will happen?»  
The angel turned towards Sherlock, a dark shadow on his face.  
«Because I come from that time.»  
«Angels can travel through time?»  
«It is tricky, and consumes a terrible amount of energy, but it can be done.»  
«And you resist the temptation to change history?»  
«Free will, my friend,» the angel said, his eyes focused somewhere else.  
«So no avoiding wars, killing Hitler, saving the Titanic...»  
«No, definitely not,» the angel interrupted brusquely. «That would not make any sense. And there would be ripples from the consequences.»  
«So you came to me in this time and accepted my plan because...» he paused as his mind accepted the implications.  
«Yes, Sherlock. You never survived the fall. There was no time for a proper plan or an alternative, without my intervention. And you could not possibly survive the impact. If it is of any consolation, there are people who have been raised from the dead several times when Heaven's fate was at stake.»  
«Not much, to be honest. But I will take it.»  
He was still staring at the graveyard, at the very spot Watson was standing in a while ago.  
«Ready to come?» asked the angel.  
«Just a few more minutes, I have to set one last thing into motion.»  
He walked towards the exit, where a car was waiting. Looking casual, he opened the door and entered. Mycroft was looking at him from the other side of the seat. He gestured Sherlock to close the door.  
«Back from the dead, I see.»  
Sherlock shrugged.  
«You seem to be less thrilled about yourself than usual. Is it because of John Watson? He is grieving, after all. Why don't you tell him?»  
«To protect him,» Sherlock answered, with a spark of frustration in his voice. «You know as well as me that he is their marker. You can know, our parents can know, the network can know, but John Watson... he cannot.»  
«You don't trust him with a secret?»  
«I don't trust his grief without such a secret.»  
«Well,» Mycroft said. «It's your friend, after all. And I suppose you won't tell me how you survived, how your master plan worked after I suggested more than twenty alternatives.»  
«None of which would have worked, and you know it.»  
«Fine,» Mycroft accepted. «So how did you survive?»  
Sherlock looked through the window at the graveyard.  
«I didn't.»  
Mycroft eyes thinned. He seemed to be searching Sherlock's head for something with such focus that it seemed he was touching it with his hands, hair by hair.  
Then he relaxed, with a slightly annoyed expression.  
«Well, keep your secrets if you will. One day either you will tell me or I will find out. Meanwhile, we have an operation to set up. Then you can go with that Castiel guy of yours.»  
Mycroft pulled out his laptop and they began to examine the files of Moriarty's organization.


End file.
